A newborn’s brain immediately learns who his mother is, but a teen’s brain seems to busy itself with learning what his mother forbids. We recognize that teens rebel. But they also join, seeking meaning as recruits for cults or terrorists. Continue reading
Blog Posts and Writings Tagged: complex system
Blog 69. Does a system have rights?
You wouldn’t expect a essay on moral rights to appear in a scientific magazine would you? Continue reading
Blog 67. Evolution versus Revolution
A friend gently suggested that the American disparity in income and opportunity could be resolved by a socialist revolution. Continue reading
Blog 66. America’s Unreal Ideals
Among industrial nations, America is unusual, perhaps totally unique. So says political scientist John Kindgon in his small book, America the Unusual. Continue reading
Blog 65. Ambiguities of Experience
My neighbor, James G. March, wrote a little book entitled The Ambiguities of Experience*. March is emeritus professor in the departments of business, political science, and sociology at Stanford University. Continue reading
Blog 63. Hope
A scientist looks at problems to solve, not at things that are well understood and running smoothly. Continue reading
Blog 53. Educable or corrigible?
Almost every individual person is educable. I’ll define educable as being capable of learning from the mistakes of others. Likewise, almost every individual is corrigible. Corrigible means capable of learning from one’s own mistakes. Institutions, like individuals, are educable. Continue reading
Blog 52. Aging in America—a systems question?
Last week, I reviewed Julian Barnes’ story of an aging, retired man named Tony Webster. Webster lives alone, remembers regrettable events of his youth, suffers remorse when he encounters the living and ghostly persons of his past, and still does not find a way to heal the hurts or to generate meaning in his life. Perhaps, as his former girlfriend says, he “just doesn’t get it.”
Does today’s youth-oriented culture—a functioning system—regard older people as irrelevant, as those who no longer “get it?” Continue reading